Little did I know that this had been a ruse planned for quite a while. Enough of a plan that earlier this week my wife gave me a gift card as an early Father’s Day present, because she doesn’t like to hold back on giving a present to anyone once she’s bought it. It’s a little quirk of hers that drives me up the wall around two weeks before Christmas or my birthday, when she wants to try to give me my present early. But Father’s Day is more of a minor holiday, and I was more than happy to spend the gift card on some stuff I’d been wanting, so all was cool.

Then last night she sends me a text mentioning a surprise for Father’s Day, that I’d find out about today. Okay, weird…I had already gotten my present, but whatever: if my wife wants to shower me with gifts, why not let her? All it means is she loves me. Again, little did I know…

So let me pause the story here to explain to those who may not have spent more than 5 minutes with me that there are but a few things I have been a fan of my entire life. The first is family: I have always loved being part of my family, and moreover, I have always wanted to have a wife and kids. The first part of that wish was fulfilled almost ten years ago when I married my best friend, Jessie, and the second half came to fruition when we adopted our beloved Joshua just over two years ago. The second object of my fandom is Olivia Newton-John in Grease and Xanadu, again because I saw those films as a toddler and was such a fan that I can sing all the songs by heart – in Olivia’s octave. Not usually something I share with the public, but it’s a part of me I can’t deny. The third (though by no means least) is Star Wars, which I saw in theaters when I was about my son’s age, and I have been hooked ever since. The only real limiting factor on my SW geekdom has been money, and a desire for people to at least identify me for myself five minutes before realizing I am a total Star Wars fan. The kind of fan who went to a Star Wars convention in a homemade Jedi costume, complete with a lightsaber hilt made from a real Graflex flash handle. The kind of fan who specifically asked Paul Blake, the actor who played Greedo in the original Star Wars film, to sign an autograph with the post-script “Han shot first.” (Only fellow SW geeks will get any of this.) The kind of fan who bought the dual-action lightsaber for my son’s second birthday so he could wield the mini-saber and learn to dual Daddy with the big saber.

Okay, so you’re getting the picture. The Force is strong with me.

That said, my wife is not with me on this. Never-mind that she abhors Xanadu (amazingly, I married her anyway), but she’s just not a Star Wars fan. True, she lets me geek out, and she actually wants me to get a display together in our family room for all the original SW toys I have kept since childhood. But she hadn’t watched any of the original trilogy until the Special Editions came out. Last week, I asked her off-handedly if she would ever let me build a life-sized R2-D2, and not only did she ask “What would you do with a life-sized R2-D2?” but also had to confirm “He’s the little blue one, right?” I was dumbfounded…this was stuff I learned before my ABCs!

Flash back to this afternoon, when I bring Josh back home to Mama. We come in, and my wife tells us both to come sit on the couch, while she shows me the surprise. I’m really glad she had me sit down, because I probably would have fainted. She has me close my eyes, then open them a few seconds later, to see this:

I was looking for evidence this was a fake tattoo.

WOW. Crossed lightsabers with Josh’s and my names. On her arm. I couldn’t believe it…it had to be fake, like she had gone to a face-painter or something. But she insisted it was real. Wow. Here’s a detail from the above photo:

Yup, it's real, alright.

Aside from some shock and mild disappointment that she had sprung on me this kind of permanent (and, let’s face it, not un-expensive) addition to her body, I was completely blown away that she would do such a thing–especially an undeniable Star Wars reference in a permanent homage to me and our son!

It takes a special woman not only to love such a fervent Star Wars fan like me (and allow our son to become trained in the ways of the Force, as well), but also go the extra mile to do this:

This is true love.

What a fantastic gift! I can never, EVER question this woman’s undying, unconditional love for me. I love you, my darling wife.

Granted, it’s nowhere near the best anyone has done, but I was so shocked, I had to share my new personal best with the wider world. (see screen photos)

- Ajax back end
- auto upgrades, plugin installs, etc
- posting from my iPhone

So now you’ll hopefully see more posts from me. I’ve also decided to more fully integrate my Twitter posts into this blog, so expect some one-liners you have otherwise missed if you haven’t been following me at this link.

In other news, I have a load of dishes to finish, a toddler bed to construct, and dinner to plan. So I’ll catch you on the flip-side…

I’ll probably stick with WordPress (though I need to upgrade to the latest version), but the template is just not meeting my needs. This being my final semester in my web design program, my final project is probably going to include putting together a new WordPress template. So I’ll probably use that experience (along with the Flash programming experience I’ll have by the end of the semester) to start from scratch.

If you have tried visiting this blog regularly and wonder why I don’t update more often, it’s because I’ve been posting links and notes over there. If you know me personally, become my friend on Facebook, and you’ll see a lot more activity there. If you don’t know me well enough to befriend me on Facebook (I try to keep it to actual acquaintances), here’s another option: I’m also becoming more active on Twitter, so follow me there if you like. While I haven’t touched FriendFeed, my sources tell me that you may be able to aggregate all the stuff that I post everywhere. While that’s a fairly scary thought, I don’t suppose I can stop you.

I went ahead and posted a Twitter widget here and a YouTube widget on my Video page (click the Video tab above). I don’t think anything else will be changing here before, say, May. But who knows. You may want to keep your eyes open.

But it is rare that anyone decides to go far enough out of their way to relay a positive customer experience. This is what I’m doing, because I think Andrew at the VZW store in Olathe deserves it:

As some folks here know, my wife and I recently gave each other iPhones; mine was my birthday/anniversary present, and hers was paid for by her lucky win of an equivalently priced Garmin (we already have a cheapo GPS that works fine) at the company holiday party, which we could return for the coveted new gadget.

Well, being new customers at AT&T, and not really needing two phones (each), my wife called up Verizon Wireless’ 800 number to cancel our service. Her contract was up in October, and mine in December (I had lost my phone right after we got it, and getting a new one cheaply necessitated a contract renewal; I guess you can’t sneeze in a Verizon Wireless store without renewing your contract). So we thought, anyway: according to VZW’s records, one of our phones had been given some ‘bonus minutes’ back in September, which–you guessed it–forced a contract renewal. Cancelling would now cost us more than $150. What the heck?? If we were disputing the renewal, we had to take our gripe into the store in Olathe, where the action apparently went down…

My wife relates this to me as I’m leaving work early, sick as a dog (I’m up at 3:30 blogging in the hopes of curing my insomnia…seems to be working). It must be said here that I’ve left work sick about 4 times in my life, that I can recall, and I’m being generous with that number. I hate leaving work sick, and today was a particularly tough day for me to leave. Well, work is just seconds away from the store in question, so I suck it up for a couple more minutes in order to hopefully sort this mess out and get myself into sweatshirt and -pants, warm socks and bed as soon as humanly possible.

I go in and politely explain what was happening to Andrew, the unlucky sales clerk who had a bit of a deer-in-headlights look to him, as I would have had if a customer comes in with a dispute. Apparently, in September one of us reduced our minutes plan, but ‘as a courtesy Verizon offers a bonus minutes plan if our customers are afraid of exceeding the lower monthly limit, a service feature that requires a 2-year contract renewal.’ “‘Feature’ my foot,” I politely didn’t say, though I was thinking it. “We don’t remember signing up for that,” I explained. “We did come in in October to try out the LG Explorers, but we returned them a week later when we found they didn’t meet our needs. The salesman at the time said that we were within our cancellation window, and he would revert our contracts back to their original timelines, which means mine would have expired in December.” Andrew remained very professional, and probably responded with a practiced script from way high up in the company about ‘yada-yada, we wouldn’t have just added on this service feature, you would have had to sign for it.’

I know I didn’t sign for anything…in fact I had never set foot in that store until we went in to try out those LG smart phones. I called my wife from the store, and she said she wouldn’t have signed anything that renewed our contracts, but I still thought that she had changed our plans to a lower minute rate sometime before the whole LG thing. Seeing a possible out to this whole unhppy business, and a way to expedite my crashing at home with some comfort food and dayquil, I told Andrew that I’d quit disputing if he could produce the printout of my wife’s signature on the contract renewal. After a quick check with the manager to see how exactly to do that, he started printing out two receipts (six printed pages) from 9/19/08…which curiously had both my wife’s and my signatures.

This was very strange…once again, I had set foot in that Verizon Wireless store only two times prior to this: once to pick up my LG Voyager, and once to return it. “When did we get those LGs again?” I curiously asked Andrew. “Can you please double-check?” I had already been there at least ten minutes, which possibly kept him from at least one sale. I could tell he was sympathetic, but he felt very much in the right about the whole thing. But instead of saying anything, he calmly obeyed. It took him another minute to bring up the records and look for the transactions, then said, marvelously, “You know, after all that…”

I had my dates mixed up. I thought it was in October when we came in to try out the smartphones. Nope, I can now tell you precisely that it was September 19th. Because as my wife was signing us up for smartphones, she lowered our overall minutes plan, but had the bonus minutes feature added just in case we went over. But when we returned the smartphones, they should have rolled back the contract renewal, too. Andrew was probably as relieved as I was that we discovered this, and promptly got his manager to approve the correction. Everyone was very nice and professional, even though they had an unhappy customer who wouldn’t leave or admit he was wrong. In the end, it confirmed that if the iPhone ever comes to Verizon, or if we decide to change away from AT&T, we will definitely be returning to that store. True, they should have caught the mistake back in September, but the fact that they corrected that error so long after the fact is testament to their integrity…and the fact that I need the calendar aspect ofthe iPhone to get my dates straight.

It was only a matter of time before the next campaign started…

NOW FOR THE BIG NEWS:
I turn 35 years of age in 2011. Thus I will be eligible to become President in 2012.

And so, without further ado, I declare my candidacy to be
DEFAULT WRITE-IN CANDIDATE OF CHOICE
for the 2012 presidential election and beyond.

No more will you be forced to write in your uncle, or neighbor, when faced with the choice of two horrible candidates.

Now you can write me in!

You have my permission, from now until further notice, to write my name in for any and all public offices for which I am eligible.

(I’ve got to start somewhere)

Watching Two Babies!
Originally uploaded by metamorphilia.

Wrangling my nephew and my son is getting more tenuous. No daddies were harmed in the making of this photo.

The bottom line is that I am still voting for Obama. The selection of Biden as his vice presidential candidate is a net minus in my book (more on that later), while Sarah Palin’s nomination as McCain’s running mate does nothing more for McCain than muddy the waters, at best (more detail on this to come as well). So nothing that has come out of the conventions nor their aftermath that will convince me to change my mind.

Senator Joseph Biden was a ‘safe’ choice for Obama’s running mate. But I don’t think he was the right choice. Yes, he solidifies the Democratic base, and he complements Obama’s perceived lack of experience, especially in the foreign policy realm (a problem that didn’t seem to stop Bill Clinton in 1992). My problems with him are as follows:

1) Biden started in the senate more than two months before John McCain was released from his cell in Vietnam in 1973. This is not my idea of a fresh face, or an agent of change. At least not the kind I can believe in. He reminds me a bit ofa Cheney to Obama’s Bush: a gruff, old-guard party politician who, from the second spot on the ticket, will exercise the party’s influence on the young, relatively unexperienced man who is charismatic enough to get elected.

2) Biden is not someone I would ever compare to Obama. Not to put on the tinfoil hat of conspiracy theory (and I am going somewhere with this), but it would be no surprise if a young, attractive progressive presidential candidate (or president, or any other political figure) were assassinated–especially if the man in question were the first african-american president of a nation with an unfortunate number of racists with guns. While a) I would never wish this on anyone, and b) hope for the best in my countrymen, JFK, RFK, MLK, and David Palmer from ’24′ might have something to say on the matter (that is, if they were still alive and/or real). The thing is, I would have preferred that Obama selected someone more like himself. This would theoretically make any would-be assassin think twice, because instead of one victim, he or she would need to find a way to kill both president & vice president. This is a far-fetched scenario, I know, but if Barack Obama were to die in office, I sure as heck wouldn’t want Joe Biden in the top spot. As it is, assuming that we aren’t so unlucky to have another president (or candidate) assassinated anytime soon, Biden is merely passable as a vice president. I guess I just don’t know why we need more old white guys leading us…

Speaking of old white guys, the Republicans have pulled another Bob Dole, in my opinion, with McCain. But that, and my thoughts on Palin, will have to wait for another time.

1) IT’S HARD WORK. I don’t say any of this for those readers out there with children–this isn’t news to you. It’s also not news to those of you who are observant enough to learn from watching others, and yet I would consider myself in that camp. But one thing that never fully sank in is how hard-core of a job it is. People who say ‘Parenting is a full-time job’ are understating the situation more than threefold. It’s not a full-time job, it’s a ROUND-THE-CLOCK MARATHON THAT NEVER ENDS. And your boss/coach is someone who needs constant attention, oversight, and care. Even when you are on point and getting diapers and bottles ready, your boss still screams at you and vomits & poops on you.  You might be able to get some kind soul to take over for you, to give you some ‘rest’ by letting you go to work at your day job so you can make more money to feed & clothes your only customer (unless you get more customers/bosses at some point along the way). And your reward is that the child gets bigger off the food you provide, and grows out of his clothes, and eats more and more.

2) IT’S WORTH EVERY SECOND. The other thing that parents aren’t kidding about is when they say how much they love their kids.  Okay, there may be some out there who just don’t feel the love, for whatever reason. But I think you can tell by how much they talk about (and blog about) and show off photos of their kids, that it’s worth all the extra work, expense, los of freedom, and so on.

A word about single moms and dads: I don’t know how they do it…but I know why they do it.

That is, I don’t know how I’d make it without my wife taking at least half the burden from me. She’s the best, and I couldn’t be a good parent without her. But also, I  know if she weren’t around–as excruciating as that would be in every way–I would still do my very best at all times to be a good father to my son. Because a smiling face like this…

…is worth every tired & hungry tirade I have to endure from him.